Day 7 - Issue 23
Psalm 118:13 NLT
'My enemies did their best to kill me, but the LORD rescued me.'
When Katey lost the use of her legs due to the MS, I set about decorating a room downstairs to be our bedroom. It was a small extension someone had added, with patio doors into the garden. I prepared all the existing paintwork, applied fresh, bright colours, and finally stood on my ladder admiring my efforts. Sadly in my excitement I forgot where I was, stepped back, and fell. Now everything moved into slow motion. In attempting to regain my equilibrium, I grabbed at the ladder which now joined me in my journey to the floor. I stuck out a foot that landed in a paint tray and my other foot landed in a bucket of wallpaper paste that exploded to decorate the walls. The noise had brought a small audience of helpers to witness my humiliation in a heap on the floor, and all I could do was lay there and laugh.
A fall is seldom a pre-planned action. Falls hurt and can damage the body. In falling, we lose our balance and collapse. Here the psalmist suggests there are forces that seek to push us over. We move from happiness to unhappiness, from security to insecurity, from confidence to uncertainty. It is in such times we need God most. For when all is well in the world, we run the risk of taking God for granted. It’s in the falling and landing that the substance of faith is both found and forged. When I hold to faith, when circumstance offers little reason to do so, I have the greatest opportunity of discovering something fresh about God. For he is most present in the gaps within our lives, gaps down which we so easily fall.
The floor sounds an unusual place to encounter God, yet perhaps explains the tradition of prostration and kneeling as expressions of worship. The floor does reveal our true character. Sometimes we act as if we had this planned all along, driven by feelings of shame and embarrassment. However, while we fall, we cannot be destroyed, for God remains our helper. Falling is not simply failure. Finding the floor is a place where we can always find God.
QUESTION: What have your falls taught you about yourself and about God?
PRAYER: Thank you, loving Father, that you stooped down in your love to pick me up.
